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In an effort to escape the hypocrisies of life at his boarding school, sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield seeks refuge in New York City.

"Repetitive, indecent, often very funny, it is wonderfully sustained by the author, who achieves all those ancient effects to be got from a hero who is in some ways inferior, and in some ways superior, to the reader....Why, then, with all this to admire, do I find something phoney in the book itself?...[T]he adult view of adolescence, insinuated by skillful faking, is agreeable to predictable public taste....[It] is what the consumer needs....The boy's attitudes to religion, authority, art, sex and so on are what smart people would like other people to have, but cannot have themselves, because of their superior understanding."

Frank Kermode, Spectator, 05/30/1958

"The voice of Holden Caulfield is a voice we instantly recognize, and yet there is just that twist of stylistic intensification that always distinguishes good dialogue....[O]n page after page, [it] is wildly funny, but it is fundamentally a serious book....Holden Caulfield is torn, and nearly destroyed, by the conflict between integrity and love."

Granville Hicks, Saturday Review, 07/25/1959

Catcher in the Rye: Search Results